100 Classics from the New England Journal of Medicine

Recently, we identified the 100 mostcited papers of all time, 1 and indicated which of them were the subjects of Citation C[a~~i~~’”2 ~omment~ries. we now plan to publish a series of essays listing the most-cited articles from several leading multidisciplinary or multispeciaky journals. Publication of these lists constitutes an open invitation to the authors of these Citation Classics to submit commentaries if they have not done so already. Simultaneously, we are sending letters of invitation to the authors involved. This essay examines the classic articles published by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Numerous studies have shown this journal to be one of the most influential medical journals in the world. Indeed, it ranks among the highest impact journals regardless of discipline. Of the thousands of articles published in NE./M since its inception in f812, many hundreds would qualify as Citation Classics. Table 1 shows the frequency distribution for the 3,100 papers from NEJA4 cited 50 or more times between 1961 and 1982. Over 250 papers have been cited at least 200 times. NEJM is famous for the “Ingelfinger rule.” The present editor, Arnold Relman, believes that NEJM is so well-respected because of his strict enforcement of the rule, among other reasons. Formulated by his predecessor, Franz Ingelfinger,s the rule prohibits prior disclosure to the media of papers submitted to NEJM. When an author submits a paper, he or she may no~ disclose its June ‘Id, IYU4